How to Read XML Document from URL

Question

Hi I am working with Document Class. When I am reading File from local system it is working and when I want to read the file and try to load the XML Document from some URL its not working.

private static Document loadTestDocument(String fileLocation) throws Exception {
    DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
    DocumentBuilder db = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
    File file = new File(fileLocation);
    System.out.println(db.parse(file).toString());
    return  db.parse(file);
}

So this method is returning Document if I have a service which returns xml and I want to consume it how can I do this I want to directly load from the service GET url.

I tried with this but its not working

File file = new File("http://someservice/getdata");

Error: File not found Then I tried to load it from Input Stream it also not working from me.

InputStream input = new URL("http://someurl:32643/api/values").openStream();

Error:

[Fatal Error] :1:1: Content is not allowed in prolog.

Now how can I achieve this any help will be appreciated I want to load the data received from the service and want to return a Document of that as I am returning in my method.

Answer 1

The following code works for me.

TestXML.java

import java.net.URL;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;

public class TestXML {

    private static Document loadTestDocument(String url) throws Exception {
        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
        return factory.newDocumentBuilder().parse(new URL(url).openStream());
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        Document doc = loadTestDocument("http://www.enetpulse.com/wp-content/uploads/sample_xml_feed_enetpulse_soccer.xml");
        System.out.println(doc);
        doc = loadTestDocument("http://localhost/array.xml");
        System.out.println(doc);
    }
}

array.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ArrayOfstring xmlns:i="w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">
    <string>value1</string> 
    <string>value2</string> 
</ArrayOfstring>

Do you actually need/use the xmlns attributes though?